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From the bestselling author of Quiet Girl in a Noisy World comes a gently humorous and poignant collection of comics about anxiety and depression-because sometimes even the simple things like getting out of bed every day feel like an uphill battle. Everything Is OK is the story of Debbie Tung's struggle with anxiety and her experience with depression. She shares what it's like navigating life, overthinking every possible worst-case scenario, and constantly feeling like all hope is lost. The book explores her journey to understanding the importance of mental health in her day-to-day life and how she learns to embrace the highs and lows when things feel out of control. Debbie opens up about deeply personal issues and the winding road to recovery, discovers the value of self-love, and rebuilds a more mindful relationship with her mental health. In this graphic memoir, Debbie aims to provide positive and comforting messages to anyone who is facing similar difficulties or is just trying to get through a tough time in life. She hopes to encourage readers to be kinder to themselves, to know that they are not alone, and that it's okay to be vulnerable because they are not defined by their mental health struggles. The dark clouds won't be there forever. Everything will turn out all right.… (more)
User reviews
Thank you to Andrews McMeel and NetGalley for providing a copy for review.
There is good, affirming advice though, and I hope it finds its way into the hands of people who will benefit from it.
2023-12-07: The back half was where she got help and started to make progress. There some good stuff and some bullshit.
"Acceptance is often the first step to getting better." Buddhism. Accept reality, then work to change how things will be. We often waste a lot of time feeling sorry for ourself and wishing things were different. Accept that they're not, now you can make changes.
"Everyone's struggles are real and valid." This is a really squishy thinking that could go either way. They are real and valid in that they are happening. They might be unreal and invalid in that our struggles are often based BS stories instead of reality. We should see both but approach the second with compassion. People don't know that their stories are BS and they often don't know there are other options.
"Accept the notion that you cannot change the past." Truth. The past doesn't exist. It happened and now it's gone and it doesn't exist except in memory and memory is not a recording, it's a re-imagining of events that's often wrong, often because it's based on BS stories.
"Love yourself a little more today." WTF does that even mean? I find this sentiment to be vague nonsense. See yourself as you are. Take pride in what you do right and have compassion for yourself when you mess up. But having compassion doesn't mean you don't try to atone for bad behavior.
"Be prepared for good times and bad times. Know that they will happen, but they will also pass." Core Buddhism. "In the meantime, we can be here now." In reality, we don't have any choice. Here and now is the only place we can be, but we can ignore the here and now and waste our time imagining the past or future.
"There's a common misconception that our mood are either one or the other at any given time. That we're either depressed or not depressed. We are either anxious or not anxious." This is binary thinking and I'm certain that it's really mentioned in Buddhism but non-dualism is frequently mentioned and to me they're the same topic. Non-dualism is generally about the separation of the self from the world and the fact that you don't exist separate from the world. It also works well as a counter to binary thinking in that dualism is about dividing things into this and that, into separate things. But in reality it's often true that things can't exist without one another. She says depression/anxiety are more like a spectrum and that's the way everything is. Life isn't just true or false, it's also true AND false and also not-true AND not-false and any other combination you can make of those things and it's all of them at the same time. Life is messy and our tendency toward binary thinking over simplification are a major obstacle to human survival.